Contact Info

I work at the Pillai Lab at Institute of Genomic and Integrative Biology, Delhi, India.

Education

Pursuing, PhD, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology

2006, MS, Amity University, Noida

2004, BS, Sri. Venkateswara College, Delhi University

Research interests

1.Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology not only encompasses the developing of novel functions in simple organisms but is growing at an ever increasing pace to provide the community with highly efficient and economic tools that could make living better. These include synthetic products for the pharm industry including conditionally active drugs capable of targeting specific molecules inside the body to cosmetic products. Several labs are also focusing on the development of biofuels to counter the increase in consumption of renewable sources of energy.

All in all I would be really interested in developing a career in the field of synthetic biology. Of my specific interest is the applied work in the field where synthetic biological parts/devices are introduced into human cells that could lead to medical benefits by silencing or activating certain genes that would be relevant to a certain disease condition.

2.Molecular Biology

ene expression is a complex phenomenon whereby the regulation steps involve the interplay of diverse strategies so as to ensure the proper and desired expression state of a gene by the cell. These regulation steps involve various mechanisms such as alternate polyadenylation and splicing, regulation by microRNAs, presence and action of various transcriptional repressors acting in cis- or trans to the referred gene etc.

A part of my doctoral research work aims to understand the regulation of altenatively polyadenylated transcript variant of the mouse cytplasmic beta-actin gene. Taking leads from my senior Tanay Ghosh's observation that the highly conserved beta-actin gene of mice exists as two alternatively polyadenylated transcript isoforms I sought to look for microRNA targets in them. As the literature suggests, often one of the alternatively polyadenylated transcript isoform is regulated by one or several microRNAs which might ensure a spatio-tenporal expression of the transcript or make keep a particular transcript isoform in a transcriptionally active or repressed stae as per developmental timing or other cellular requirements (literature has well documented evidences as examples). Upon experimental verification we at our lab were able to show that the longer transcript isoform of the mouse cytoplasmic beta-actin gene is regulated by a microRNA where unlike its conventional role the microRNA upregulated the target gene. Further mechanistic insights to study the fuctional aspects of such regulation are needed and experiments required to be done to further elucidate the requirement , relevance and biological intricacies of the complex phenomenon of regulation of alternate transcript isoforms

For further details regarding the various methods and protocols used for this study please contact me directly.

3.Developmental Biology

The regulation of gene expression during the early development of an organism is a governed by a series of regulatory steps which involves an intricate and fine balance of genes being expressed in a spatio-temporal manner. Drosophila and Zebafish have proven to be two of the most studied model systems for understanding early embryonic development in eukaryotes. Both the model systems have their specific advantages that make them suited for study of various developmental mechanisms ranging from the study of specific gene defects by creating transgenics to the visualization of gene localization patterns during various developmental stages.

I have been working toward the understanding of gene expression regulation during early embryoni development by microRNAs. microRNAs have been shown to act as key regulatory molecules that are endogenously present in higher organisms and fine tune gene expression levels post-transcriptionally by binding tot the 3'UTRS of their taget genes.

For further details regarding the various methods and protocols used for this study please contact me directly.